Former foster father found guilty of sex abuse

Victim, now 21, broke down with ‘relief and gratitude’ after verdict: prosecutor

A Saskatoon jury has found Richard Ludwig guilty of sexually abusing a woman when she was his foster child more than a decade ago.

Jurors deliberated for approximately seven hours on Wednesday before convicting Ludwig, 51, of sexual assault and sexual interference stemming from 2000 to 2005, when the victim was between four and nine years old.

The now 21-year-old woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, broke down in tears as she described how Ludwig touched her vagina and made her stroke his penis until ejaculation multiple times while they lived on an acreage near Humboldt.

On Wednesday, she cried in “relief and gratitude” that her voice was finally heard, Crown prosecutor Tamara Rock said following the verdict.

The jury had to decide if the Crown proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the woman was telling the truth about being sexually abused.

Defence lawyer Brad Mitchell argued she was continuing to lie about a story she fabricated as a child, while Rock told jurors she was revealing a “dark truth” in order to move on with her life.

When she was nine years old, the victim told her foster mother that Ludwig had been touching her. The foster mother asked her husband if that was true; the man denied it and the abuse stopped, the woman told the jury.

Both foster parents testified that the girl made the allegations.

They said they decided to deal with it by ensuring the girl was never alone with the accused.

Rock said the couple didn’t report the allegations to social services because they knew there would be an investigation.

The girl concocted a story to get out of the house after her brother told her he wanted to leave, Mitchell argued. She wanted to leave because she was being sexually abused, Rock countered, questioning why the woman would maintain a false allegation 13 years later.

“How does a little girl know about a man’s penis?” Rock asked the jury, paraphrasing the complainant’s response when the defence accused her of lying.

Mitchell said the girl did not provide any details about the alleged abuse when she disclosed it as a child.

She first described the assaults in a statement to a social worker when she was 17, after she had been out of the home for three years, the jury heard.

Even then, she did not say that Ludwig ejaculated on her — a major detail that only later came to light, Mitchell noted.

“She’s making things up as she goes along,” he said, arguing the woman was motivated to continue lying as a teen because her brother was still living in the foster home.

The woman went to police after years of staying quiet — due to her foster mother’s dismissive response — because she received encouragement from family members and discovered the couple had a baby daughter, Rock argued.

Ludwig remains out of custody until his sentencing hearing, which is scheduled to take place Friday in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench.

Warning: This story contains graphic content